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AT THE MOVIES

''THE GOOD FATHER'' stars Anthony Hopkins as a middle-aged man fighting for what he might call ''male liberation.'' It depicts the fury of a liberal British publishing executive whose wife has left him for another man and who is forced to see his 6-year-old child only on weekends.

His hatred of women and anguish over the loss of his son become obsessive, but finally he is forced to admit that his anger is really against the boy, whose birth destroyed his marriage. The director, Mike Newell, said his own child was very young when he made the film. ''I could see how that could happen to you,'' he said. ''A kid is like a steel chisel. It works its way into any crack in a relationship. But who could admit that the coming of a child may not always be wonderful, that it may be disturbing and break up things? Most people can't, but it's true. It's not the only truth, but it was a truth for that character.''

Mr. Newell said the film was also the story of self-involvement. ''None of the characters in this film are really sympathetic, except perhaps the wife,'' he said. ''I set out simply to make a modern monster. One is forced often to make one's characters sympathetic, and it comes out as grey fudge. Well, some people are monstrous. It's an exaggeration, meant to be a bit like a Ben Jonson comedy, observable foibles pushed just over the bounds of reality.''

The camera shows a London that is grimy, bleak, depressing. ''It swims in the water it swims in,'' Mr. Newell said. ''London looks like London looks these days. It's not so much fun over here right now.'' PRODUCTION MAY INCREASE AMID RUMORS OF JULY STRIKE

Word around town is that several films are being rushing into production at a less than leisurely pace, in order to finish by July 1, when a Directors Guild strike may begin. There are fears that it could paralyze the industry. The contract between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is the collective-bargaining agent of the studios, expires on June 30th, and although negotiations have not yet begun, both sides seem girded for battle. Officials at the Directors Guild expect the studios to attempt to get rollbacks from the guild, especially on the issue of payment of residuals.

If a strike occurs, films scheduled for Christmas release may have to wrap up production by June 30th or be delayed until a settlement is reached.

Barry Levinson started work on ''Good Morning Vietnam'' almost immediately after finishing ''Tin Men,'' both for Disney's Touchstone Pictures. He began casting the new movie while still doing publicity for his last. The new film is to be a satiric comedy in which Robin Williams will play a disk jockey for Armed Forces Radio during the Vietnam war.

Another Touchstone film about to begin is ''Big Business,'' starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin. The film is the first in Ms. Midler's exclusive three-picture deal with Disney Studios.

The story is a zany one of mistaken identity. Two sets of identical twins are born in the same hospital - one to a wealthy industrialist and his wife, the other to a poor Appalachian couple. But the girls are misarranged in the hospital and each family is given a mixed set of twins, which will allow Ms. Midler and Ms. Tomlin to play both sides of the class divide as the twins grow up in their respective homes. Shooting is to begin in April in New York.

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United Artists is also moving ahead on two big-budget, big-star films. The first is ''Rainman,'' scheduled to start shooting in late March. Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise are to star, under Martin Brest's direction. Mr. Cruise will play a fast-talking schemer who finds that he has been disinherited by his father, who left a million dollars to a mental institution. Investigating, he discovers that he has an older brother, institutionalized since childhood, who is an idiot savant. Mr. Hoffman is to play the institutionalized brother.

Another film as yet unannounced but tentatively scheduled to begin shooting in April is ''Bright Lights, Big City,'' based on the Jay McInerney novel about an editorial assistant for a New York magazine who loses his prestigious job and fashionable wife, as he gets caught in a cocaine-induced downward spiral. The film will star Michael J. Fox. It is directed by Joyce Chopra, with a screenplay by Tom Cole - the same team that made the critically successful ''Smooth Talk.'' The movie is the first venture from Mirage Productions, the new company run by Sydney Pollack, the producer-director, and Mark Rosenberg, the former head of production at Warner Brothers.

If the Directors Guild does go out on strike, films started before the strike date will not be allowed to proceed, and even post-production work would be affected, according to Mike Franklin, the guild's national executive director. Mr. Franklin said that the producers had requested that movies begun before a certain date be exempt from the strike should it occur. The guild rejected the proposal. ''No labor organization worth its salt would agree to that,'' Mr. Franklin said. FILM EXCHANGES BETWEEN U.S. AND SOVIET

''Come and See,'' the World War II epic about Nazi brutality in a Byelorussian village as seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy, is strong stuff. Directed by Elem Klimov, head of the Soviet Film Makers Union, it is powerfully and emotionally anti-fascist, with bleak images and nearly unremitting peaks of anguish. The film is difficult for many Americans to approach, according to Gerald Rappoport, president of International Film Exchange, which is distributing the film in the United States. ''It's now playing in Los Angeles and New York'' Mr. Rappoport said, ''but it is only doing a fair business - not what it deserves. It's so harsh and difficult; it shows the atrocities. It's a true story, but here it doesn't get a large audience. And it doesn't even get the art audience because they're not as interested in war films.''

The International Film Exchange, which buys Soviet films for distribution here and sells American films to the Soviet Union, also represents the films of East Germany, Rumania and Czechoslovakia in the United States.

Mr. Rappoport said that in the last six years the Soviet Union had bought rights to 36 American films through his company. The Film Exchange has purchased about 68 films from the Soviet Union in the same time. Right now, according to Mr. Rappoport, there are about 20 Soviet films being shown around the United States, about half of them at universities, the other half in commercial theaters.

What kind of image do the films provide of their respective film industries? Although Mr. Rappoport said the Soviet films represented the country's top films, a look at the list of American films sold to the Russians indicates that political considerations and inexpensive foreign rights may determine the choices. Some of the films bought from Mr. Rappoport in recent years include ''The Image Maker,'' about corrupt politicians; ''Daniel,'' about two children whose parents are executed as spies -based on the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; ''Under Fire,'' about dirty goings-on in Nicaragua, and ''Hangar 18,'' about a U.F.O. that crashes and is kept a secret by the United States Government. Other films generally are old ones or are minor movies that probably have low prices, such as ''Spartacus'' and ''The Adventures of Mark Twain.''

''We're not the only place they get their films,'' Mr. Rappoport pointed out. ''They also do about two major films a year. They've shown 'Tootsie,' for example, and 'Absence of Malice.' '' ''Tootsie'' starring Dustin Hoffman, is about an out-of-work actor who pretends to be a woman to get a job in a soap opera. ''Absence of Malice,'' an attack on journalistic abuses stars Sally Field, as a journalist who throws suspicion on an innocent man, Paul Newman.

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